After losing its first 34 games of the season and starting out 0-11, the San Diego State men’s volleyball team has been showing signs of improvement.
It has won three matches since Spring Break and nearly upset No. 8-ranked Long Beach State and No. 11 Pacific, both on the road.
But now, ironically, its season is over.
Tuesday night’s battle at UC San Diego was the final match of the season for the Aztecs (6-21; 2-17 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation). And they ended the season beautifully with a 17-16, 15-7, 15-11 sweep of the Tritons (5-19; 2-17 MPSF) in front of 518 people at RIMAC Arena.
Amazingly, one of the things that gave SDSU a lot of problems in the beginning of the season blocking was key to its victory to end the season.
The Aztecs outblocked UCSD 10-7, and they used many of the blocks to take back momentum from a team playing its final home match of the season.
Senior Ryan Niles was the big stopper for SDSU with six blocks.
“It was a lot of fun out there,” he said. “Blocking wins the games and I’m glad I was able to block so many balls.”
The other key for the Aztecs was cutting down on mistakes. SDSU made 13 fewer errors than the Tritons. Mistakes played their most critical role in game one, when both teams had 25 kills, but UCSD made two more errors than the Aztecs.
After that, SDSU dominated, falling behind only once in the next two games. Once again, the big hitter for the Aztecs was Matt Hyden. His 19 kills led the match, and he finished second behind Niles with four blocks.
The win gave SDSU a sweep over their crosstown rivals for the second year in a row. In fact, the Aztecs are 14-1 against the Tritons in the 1990s.
“This is great to beat our crosstown rivals to end my career,” senior Randy Totorp said. “If we would have started playing the way we are now earlier in the year, our season would’ve turned out a lot different.
“I can’t be too happy because of our record, but at least my last memories will be of good volleyball play.”
The improved play at the end of season, according to head coach Jack Henn, was a different lineup the team used toward the end of the season to cut down on mistakes.
“(Later in the season) we went more to a ball control-type lineup,” Henn said. “We wanted to eliminate some of our attacking errors off poor ball control, and it worked out pretty well.”
The change allowed the Aztecs to win more matches as the season progressed and has now given them some optimism heading into the offseason.
SDSU loses only three seniors from this year’s team and has a group of experienced returners who expect to start winning a lot earlier in the season next year.
